I remember sitting across from a friend at a familiar pub, trying to explain the past few months to her. How my dad had taken a new job across the country in Arizona; how he, my mom, and my grandfather would all be moving out there; and how my little brother and I would be staying behind and renting the family home with some friends. Besides that framework, to my regret, I poured out all the bad stories. The stressors, the annoyances, the worst moments, and the conflicts. I hardly mentioned the good things, and I am pretty sure I didn’t mention God at all.

I needed perspective.

Though the change was still raw, I wanted to tackle my tangle of emotions and memories and go deeper. God was constantly at work in my life during this time, stitching blessings into a transforming tapestry. I recognized it, but I hadn’t claimed it as the greater truth yet. Sometimes we have to look backwards with a critical eye to see around the turmoil. My venue for this was poetry.

Every week for the next few months, I will be posting poems from the resulting collection, called Wings Will Come: Journey. In this collection, I tried to narrate the events and emotions of my closest family moving far away and to seek to see where God was working. I move (more or less) chronologically through the story, culminating with a poem that is a prayer of hope for continued growth, love, and peace for both myself and my family out there in the Wild West.

God bless

“Where did you go?”The beginning

where did you go,
old days? better days,
rosy days, good days?
new days, stale days,
gray and cluttered days
pushed you away.
late at night I hear only
tension in your voice:
a strain of loss as you
buckle further under
the more, more, more.
as you stand sad and lonely
at the divide between
you and now.
those nights I prayed for
the joy that drove the beginning
to rise up again anew.
I prayed it for a long time:
save what is good here
before it is ash and
empty silver years.
God answered when
I wasn’t yet ready.